Workingman's Benevolent Association
United States 1868
Synopsis
Part labor union and part advocate of nonviolent change, the Workingman's Benevolent Association (WBA) represented the demands of miners in the American North for better labor standards. Founded by John Siney, an Irish immigrant, in 1868, the Workingman's Benevolent Association originally presented a less violent front than its sister organizations, including the "Molly Maguires." The association focused on arbitrating the bitter confrontation between its components, namely the coal miners of Pennsylvania, specifically the Saint Clair region, and the owners of companies such as the Reading Railroad who were attempting to consolidate control over the anthracite (hard) coal fields in eastern Pennsylvania in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.
Timeline
- 1848: Revolutions rock Europe, and Marx and Engels publish the Communist Manifesto.
- 1853: Crimean War begins in October. The struggle, which will last until February 1856, pits Russia against the combined forces of Great Britain, France, Turkey, and Sardinia-Piedmont. A war noted for the work of Florence Nightingale with the wounded, it is also the first conflict to be documented by photojournalists.
- 1859: In Belgium, Jean-Joseph-étienne Lenoir builds the first practical internal-combustion engine.
- 1861: Within weeks of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, the American Civil War begins with the shelling of Fort Sumter.
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